


i took the stars from our eyes (and then i made a map)

by greekdemigod



Series: nathaag universe [2]
Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 14:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: Companion pieces to "not all things holy are about grace".





	i took the stars from our eyes (and then i made a map)

**Author's Note:**

> you miss them, i miss them, and i've been having difficulty with all my other writing so here we are.
> 
> i don't know how many more of these there will be, but i'm officially opening the door to writing about them again whenever my other writing isn't working because this universe still comes as naturally to me as ever.
> 
> hope you enjoy! let's go, lesbians!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their tumultuous year, Anne Lister is finally taking her girlfriend on their proper first date.

There is no real reason Ann Walker should be as nervous as she is, but the way she paces through her small bedroom and chews her bottom lip betrays that she is. Anne is picking her up in a little over half an hour, giving her ample time left to figure out her outfit—and, just maybe, calm down a little.

They have done every first already. There should be no pressure—no worrying they’ll run out of things to say when it’s just the two of them, no wondering if there will be a kiss, no questioning if going home with her after the first date is a little too much. They have _done _all of that.

Even declarations of feelings have happened already. A few times. Granted, mostly on Ann’s part, but Anne has finally been forthcoming, so she should have not an ounce of stress for this.

But she does. _Oh, she does._

Her shorter hair is a blessing, because it looks best just framing her face. No weighing of her dozens of options. No scrolling through pinterest boards full of elegant, date-appropriate hairdos.

Anne has seen her in plenty of dresses before, and in more casual attire too. There is one pair of dress pants in her closet that she has been avoiding all year because it feels a little like Anne’s territory that she shouldn’t encroach on. Fitted dress pants, button-ups, blazers and jackets—her girlfriend wears all those things so much better that she shouldn’t even try.

Right? Except... She thinks Anne would probably be into it. It is much more ballsy than what Ann usually wears, but being a little stubborn and assertive has been doing good things for her, and she could use the boost in confidence.

If not rocking a banging outfit, what else is going to make her feel more secure?

(Thinking about how she spent last night at Anne’s, maybe. Or the hickeys that seem to perpetually litter her neck because her girlfriend has a thing for marking her as taken, it seems.)

The pants are a maroon red and fit a little tighter around her waist than she remembers. Maybe she’ll have to join Anne to the gym sometimes—or entice her to have even more sex. Either way, she hasn’t been living her healthiest sort of lifestyle this past academic year, so she will start working on that soon.

But not today. Today she will go along with whatever Anne has planned for them and be glad for it.

She matches it with a simple floral tank top and black heels, feels immediately so sophisticated as she looks herself over. With a splash of perfume and a good face of make-up, she actually looks the part of a young woman going on a first date.

Save the part where she looks like she has gotten professionally ravished a couple of nights this week. The bags under her eyes are worse now than they were when she just came out of her exams.

A smile touches to her lips.

There’s no use for sleeping if they have so much time to catch up on. Ann can’t see how sleeping her mornings away should somehow be better than sitting on the floor of Anne’s bedroom and asking her about her favorite book growing up or the story behind the crescent moon-shaped scar on her right knee.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she calls out perfunctorily. Elizabeth is used to her barely being home by now, expects nothing else. Maybe it’s a little fast, but she has a toothbrush at Anne’s place and an everlasting invitation to stay over.

There’s Anne’s car in the quiet cul-de-sac of her neighborhood already as she pulls the door closed behind her. It sits gleaming in the sun, the bright spot shifting along as she takes the three steps down to street level and every inch forward until she is buried in Anne’s arms.

Hugging Anne feels more and more like coming home.

(She does not notice her nerves disappear—only notices the brand new perfume clinging to Anne’s throat and how securely she is wrapped up in her girlfriend’s arms.)

“You look... fantastic,” Anne murmurs as she pushes Ann away at arm’s length to be able to look her over. She is kept away only for a long moment before being dragged back in bodily and kissed soundly. Thumbs settle against the waistband of her pants, most of it pressing into the fabric, but the tips touch to the warm, soft skin of her hips.

Even this little bit of skin-to-skin contact is enough to make awareness flutter in her belly.

When she tries to pull back, Anne clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip and halts her movement. She watches as Anne tugs her back by her hips and keeps kissing her. Before she can try to escape, they flip—the whole world twirling along—and then she is pressed against hot metal.

Anne has been _all _about kissing her in public.

She can’t complain when Anne kisses her just that way that makes her tender to the knees, that makes her grateful to have something holding her upright like this.

“Are you ready to go?”

“Um, yeah,” she breathes, swallows deeply. “I think so.”

She is a little dazed as she gets into the passenger seat and buckles herself in. Only then does she get a proper look at Anne and—_God. _Even just the fact alone that she is wearing white is enough to surprise Ann, but paired with a dapper vest and a dark pair of form-fitting pants, she looks incredibly handsome.

The top button of her shirt is unbuttoned, of course, and her sunglasses dangle there until they’re ten minutes underway and Anne slides them smoothly up the bridge of her nose.

The dark frames to match the dark hair loosely bound back only tie the whole look together even more. Ann sits on her hands to keep from reaching out to the delectable woman that drives her crazy without even saying anything.

They settle into the drive soon enough. She remembers, very early on in their working together on her thesis, Anne saying something about hating long drives. But with the music on, their conversation light and full of laughter, the hour they spend on the road flies by like mere minutes.

Outside her window, Edinburgh rolls out of vision and is quickly replaced by more green, more trees, more landscapes that make the stories of fae gain a little more weight. She doesn’t even remember to wonder where they are going.

Their destination is a picturesque small town, so green that all other colors seem out of place. It is old enough to have a weathered sign with the town name that needs to keep getting repainted, every building one that has a history. The air streaming in through the window is fresher here, fills her lungs with sweet oxygen.

When they park in front of a tiny art gallery with sprawling parkgrounds around it, Ann knows an Anne Lister date is going to be unlike any others she has ever been on.

“Miss Walker,” Anne drawls, extending her hand to lead her towards the front of the establishment. Ann would like to be able to come up with a witty retort, but between the car ride lulling her to a peaceful haze and the overwhelming softness at seeing the place Anne has decided to take her to, she can’t find anything.

She forms her mouth to a smile instead and takes Anne’s hand, and her invitation to be whisked away into an adventure.

The admission tickets are pre-bought; Anne brandishes them with a flourish.

“Have you organized everything to the last detail?” she asks as they step within the first chamber, a small hall that has the artist’s portrait up on a pedestal and info booklets on a table next to it. Ann goes to take one, but is held back by a gentle but firm hand on the elbow.

“Not everything, but most.” She adjusts her grip so that she can put Ann’s hand on her outstretched arm. “I’ll be your guide today.”

And what a phenomenal guide Anne is. She has clearly studied up on her subject beforehand, read information surrounding the paintings, but she doesn’t talk. Not until Ann has stood in front of a painting long enough that she has taken it all in, felt the feelings that it brings up in her, tried to figure out on her own what it means—only then does Anne speak, in her teacher’s voice but at a whisper next to her ear, and she speaks vivid stories and tales from the artist’s life into existence for her.

There are few people around them at the start, and she is so swept up in Anne and her voice and her hand in her own that she doesn’t realize everyone is filtering out until they are all alone. Soft music starts playing. The lights switch off, leaving only little pinpricks of illumination that cast like stars across the navy blue walls.

In complete wonder Ann spins around in place, looking around at this night sky that has been brought to life in the middle of their date.

“Do you like it?”

“_You_—?” Of course. Of course Anne would do something like this. “You did this?”

“I wanted to be all alone with you.”

She has no eyes for the paintings after that. Ann fakes it, she’s not sure how well but she tries, she fakes looking at these paintings but she’s really watching Anne. The studious look in her eyes when she takes in a piece of art, each pull around her mouth, every flex of muscles in her expressions. And then, when she speaks, at the way her mouth moves, her tongue, the way her eyes alight on her and away again.

In a whole gallery of art, Anne Lister is still the masterpiece.

“I think you should stop talking,” Ann whispers as they’re about to move on again. She turns her body towards Anne’s, brings a hand up to touch her fingers to Anne’s cheek, trace her bottom lip. “And kiss me right now.”

Anne does just that. Arms slide around her waist to hold her, and their lips touch with increasing familiarity but never decreasing pleasure. Kissing Anne is a dream every time.

“Do you like it?”

“So much.”

In the middle of their own galaxy, they kiss and kiss and then kiss some more. They’re giggling and all smiles when they finally leave, holding hands, only vague impressions of paintings and half-remembered stories of a painter retained in Ann’s mind.

The gardens behind the gallery are even more of a work of art, though the artist has nothing to do with it. Hedges, flower beds in every color imaginable, sand-colored pebbles paths that wind this way and that. There is a fountain up ahead that they hear by its clattering water but don’t end up finding.

But they’re holding hands as they’re strolling together, talking some more, and that is all she wanted from the date. To find out more about who Anne Lister is. Fall in love even deeper.

As it gets later, Ann expects they must be heading home soon. Instead, Anne, seemingly knowing her way around, takes her into the town proper. They pass a desolate cemetery on one side, a row of identical houses on the other. There’s shops closing down as they pass, but restaurants opening onto their terraces and trying to invite people in.

Anne takes her to a small Italian restaurant owned by an elderly woman and her three sons. They take amazing care of them. Their food is great. But most of all, they don’t care at all that their hands are clasped together the entire time, obnoxiously presented on top of the table.

Eating with one hand sure isn’t easy, so they break the contact occasionally, but Ann is very glad to see those fingers slide back between her own every time.

She did not think Anne had it in her to be this... _cheesy_. Ann loves it.

She’s also well aware this might just be for her benefit. Ann has always been the Hallmark romance movies kind. The cry at a happy ending sort of girl. She wants the epic romance, the cute dates, the undeniable fluffiness of it all.

And she wants it with Anne Lister even more, having had to overcome so much to even get to their first date.

For all that Anne is smooth, sophisticated, and really, really sexy, turns out she’s also a little bit of a romantic dork.

Sated, happy, Ann sits back in her seat. Dusk is readily approaching now, which means they have been here for _hours_. Despite being on their final course already, and through a bottle of wine, it has not felt like hours have passed.

_Many _hours have passed already since Anne came to pick her up, and she has felt none of them.

“You can’t drive home like this, can you?” The thought struck earlier, but it doesn’t fully form until now. “We’re staying here.”

“We are.”

The place she has rented looks like a cottage. It sits nestled into the woods, recalling old fairy tales with its thatched roof and white brick. Anne whispers into her neck that it’s called a _chaumière_. It is very cozy, though she will neglect the fireplace and the blankets for now.

There is a small living room to it, a kitchenette, a functional bathroom—but the bed room is its crown jewel. A four-poster bed sits against the back wall, covers and pillows looking plush, the sheer space it allows to sleep preposterous. Slender as she is, she thinks she could just drown in a bed like that.

A rug spreads from underneath to cover most of the floor, and wide double windows that go from ceiling to floor let out onto a small terrace and the woods beyond.

It’s very secluded, private.

When she turns around, she sees Anne has been watching her. “I think this is where the wolf would kill the girl it led away.” Her prowl is that of a wolf, alright, but there is only kindness in her eyes. And something else. Something fierce that roars awake.

They’re like this: they can’t keep their hands off each other. With this bubble of privacy for the two of them alone, they can do what they want—and what they want to do is each other. They go from idle chatter and being content to colliding like comets: they could be destructive, but they love each other instead.

Tangled in their sheets, clothes discarded in a blast area around their bed, they spend the rest of the evening with the curtains drawn on their four-poster bed. Their bubble shrinks down to the edges of their sweat-soaked skin, to the framing of falling locks of hair and their limbs moving, to every giggle and whispered word very much betraying that maybe one day, they’ll also be each other’s lasts.


End file.
